Healing Relationship Resentment

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“Needs that go unspoken go unmet.”

Have you heard of relationship resentment?

If you are the strong friend, older sibling, ride or die chick, or the one everyone can call at 3 am, you’ve likely felt it. And today, we are exploring its roots, signs, and the emotional toll it takes on you and your relationships.

By the end of this episode, you will be closer to recognizing your unmet relationship needs and personal responsibility in addressing your resentment. Deep breath, Beloved… I’ll be tender and transition the conversation into practical steps for healing, including clear communication, making loving requests, and cultivating emotional safety. Whether you want to rebuild connections and foster healthier dynamics or release relationships that are no longer good for your heart, this is a great place to start.

What Is Relationship Resentment?

So take a deep breath because today we’re going to talk about something that may be a bit sensitive. I had to take a couple of breaths while preparing for this episode, and I took another breath before pressing record because this is something I have struggled with for years.

It started with my parents, and early on in some friendships. I’ve experienced resentment in my professional relationships, and I’ve experienced resentment in my marriage. And in case you need a little bit of clarity on what relationship resentment means, relationship resentment is anger, bitterness, frustration, and other negative feelings and emotions that build up over time. These feelings stem from feeling undervalued or underappreciated, overlooked, or disregarded. If you’ve ever felt disrespected in your relationships, unheard, wronged, or betrayed… Perhaps taken advantage of or ignored, you likely have experienced relationship resentment. While reading those emotions, likely some of the places where you felt them came up.

Those feelings lead to distance, hypervigilance, pettiness, passive aggression, stonewalling, avoidance, and even total withdrawal. So if you feel yourself stepping away from the relationship, not answering the text or the phone calls, being extra about protecting yourself, and being very defensive, you may be experiencing relationship resentment.

Perhaps you’ve been engaging in pettiness, lack of empathy, saying little passive-aggressive comments in the middle of an argument or in the middle of the day, just out of nowhere. Stonewalling and avoiding, giving the silent treatment, staying at work longer, doing things that put your coworkers in a bad light, because you don’t think that they deserve to be on the project with you because you’re doing all the work and they’re doing nothing… Or total withdrawal, where it’s like you were friends, really good friends, and now all of a sudden you don’t want to have anything to do with them. All of those experiences could be a result of relationship resentment.

For me, and several of my clients and friends, the core of this resentment is unmet needs.

At the core of what you are feeling in your relationship with your parents, your relationship with your partner or spouse, your relationship at work, and your friendships are unmet needs.

What Causes Relationship Resentment?

See if any of them sound familiar:

Poor communication
Unequal responsibilities around the house or on the job
Lack of boundaries.
Unmet expectations
Infidelity
Disrespect
Unresolved conflicts.
Outgrowing each other
Unfulfilling sex life
Lack of affection, attention, or care.

Did any of those sound familiar in your relationships? Have you been wondering why it doesn’t feel good to you anymore? Why you’ve been avoiding the phone calls and the texts?

Signs Of Relationship Resentment

When you experience those things in your relationship and don’t address them, they don’t go away. The impact shows up in the form of frequent arguments. All of a sudden, you’re arguing all the time about everything, including what’s for dinner. Avoidance and withdrawal become a pattern. All of a sudden, you’re doing everything you can to stay out longer or to work until you are sure the other person is sleeping. Yo may experience blaming and finger-pointing. That may sound like, “You’re the reason our relationship is the way it is. You’re the reason why we can’t agree on anything. You’re the reason why our money is funny… You. You, You.“

Relationship comparison is another sign. All of a sudden, you’re like, “Why can’t you be like my sister’s husband? Why can’t you cook like my auntie? You’re not doing it the way my mom used to do. You may be secretly comparing your relationship to relationships on social media—Just sitting in your bed at night, scrolling through your phone, romanticizing other people’s relationships when you should turn around and talk to your partner.

Holding grudges, loss of empathy, passive aggression, and avoiding intimacy. These are all signs of relationship resentment. I want to share a few things that you may want to consider.

A Few Things To Consider

You are the source of resentment when you are silent about your own needs. It would be easy to blame the other person for why your needs aren’t being met, but truly, and this is something we will have to talk about another time at length, you are always 100 % responsible for yourself. Other people contribute, they encourage, they support, but the job is yours. And I want you to sit with this:

Needs that go unspoken go unmet.

So talking about how you feel is not a direct request. Even the closest person to you in life, the person who has known you all your life, can’t read your mind. You are going to have to ask for what you want and need in every single one of your relationships. The ones with your parents, the relationship you have with your siblings, absolutely your spouse, your children, even on the job. Yes. your boss, your coworker, the people on your team. You are going to have to ask for what you need.

You are responsible for your boundaries. It’s 100 % an inside job, and we must be careful to choose people who want to contribute to us, not just benefit from us. This is a big one. You bring everything, all of you, to the table when you show up in your relationships, but not everyone has that same energy. Your partner, your friend, everyone in your life, they have their own relationship history. They have their own familial history. We have different backgrounds, different beliefs, and different things that we regard and value. Not everyone is bringing what you bring to the table. So you have to keep in mind that in every relationship you enter. You have to see what they bring to the table, see it as all that they have, not potential for the future. Whoever you see in the moment is who they are—and you are marrying, dating, befriending, working with that version of the person. If they grow into another version that is better in the future, great. But you can’t count on that. You can’t determine that or pre-determine that. You have to decide if the person before you right now is the one. And if the answer is no, mind the answer. Listen to your intuition. Understand that what you see is what you are going to get.

Now I’m not pointing the finger at you as the source of all of the issues. But what I am saying is that if it’s not working for you… If there is bitterness, resentment, pettiness, or passive aggression present on your part, you are responsible for healing it. And sometimes it cannot be healed in that relationship. And that is a reality that we all must face.

Can we heal the resentment? Of course. We are going to get into some ways to do that. But I promise you this: if resentment is present, love will not always be. If resentment is present, affection will leave the relationship. If resentment is present, empathy will leave the relationship. Resentment takes up too much space for anything else to dwell. So if you have been carrying resentment in your relationship from year to year to year, it is only a matter of time before resentment has its way with you.

There are a lot of things that we can heal from, including resentment, but we have to do the work to heal.

How To Heal Relationship Resentment

Get clear on what you feel.

This is my personal practice for healing resentment in my relationships. I will stop myself in the middle of a difficult conversation and ask, What am I feeling?

If you don’t get clear on what you feel in your relationship, you can’t get your needs met. If you don’t understand that you feel lonely, unheard, or undervalued, you can’t ask for more affection, date nights, and attention. You can’t ask for more respect when it comes to how you want to raise the children or run the house because you don’t even know that that’s why you’re angry. You’re stuck on what they said. You’re stuck on the fact that the socks are left around the house. You’re stuck on the things and not on what needs to be addressed, which is your need.

Hey, I’m going to be home at six. Before I get there, can you clean the kitchen so that I can start dinner?

When you make a request that the other person may not even consider—especially when you’re always doing all the things—you give them a chance to meet a need. I have to say this to myself: if you’re always doing it, of course, they’re not going to do it.

I know what I bring to the table. I know the kind of friend that I am. I know the kind of sister that I am. I know the kind of mom I am. I know the kind of wife and partner that I am. Who wouldn’t want all of me? If I need assistance in any way, I’m going to have to ask for it. So get clear on what you feel.

Get clear on what you want to feel.

I feel anger, I feel resentment, I feel frustration. I feel bitterness, I feel loneliness, I feel disrespected…

I want to feel supported. I want to feel seen. I want to feel closeness. I want to laugh. I want to engage in a way that is loving, calm, and soft. I want to sit on the couch and watch a show. I want to show up at my friend’s house and cook. I want to sit and maybe do anything, and just be in the presence of my friend as we watch a show because life is so hard and all I want to do right now is relax and rest for a moment.

I want to go on vacation. I don’t want to spend our friendship having brunch, lunch, and dinner all the time. I want to go skating. I want to go hiking. I want to go walking. What do you want to experience, feel, do…

We spend a lot of time on what we don’t want, and sometimes that is helpful. But we need to uncover what we actually want so that we can get it.

Make loving requests.

If you decide to stay in a friendship, the relationship, or if you decide to work on your relationship with your siblings, that is a decision that needs love. It needs care.

Once we decide that we want to be in the relationship, we have to start setting the tone. If the tone was harsh, combative, and aggressive in the past, we have to switch that to loving, careful, and tender.

“Clean up this house before I get home” is one way toattempt to express a need. Or you could try, “Hey, babe, I’ll be home around six. I would love it if you could vacuum, pick up the clothes I folded, and put them away so when I get home, I can cook you an amazing meal… or so that when I get home, we can have enough time tonight to lounge on the couch and just cuddle.” That is a loving request that addresses your specific needs.

Hey sis, can you call before you come over? I want to make sure I have something prepared for us to eat. Or, Hey sis, I’ve been busy running around all day. I want to take a nap. So call before you come so I can freshen up and be ready when you get here.

Make loving requests that are clear and specific to flip that switch from harsh and aggressive to loving and tender.

Cultivate emotional safety.

If you’ve been hurt in a relationship and you want to heal the relationship, you need to reset and adjust some things.

If my house caught on fire, I’m going to have some trepidation walking into that building again—even after the fire was extinguished. I need to know that the fire marshal determined what was the cause of the fire so that it won’t happen again. I want to make sure that the foundation is sturdy. Everything has been repaired before I move back into this home.

A relationship full of resentment is like a house that is actively burning. We must put the fire out and secure it again.

And sometimes we have to burn down the relationship to rebuild it.

Set the tone for a new and improved relationship by rebuilding intimacy. Intimacy requires safety.

Listen to music instead of watching television all the time. Draw some bath water for your loved one. Cook a good meal. Turn on a favorite show if television is your thing. Cultivate emotional safety through loving gestures.

Allow your person to share their heart without judgment. You don’t have to say anything, just be a listening ear. Make sure that they know that you want to hear what they have to say.

To cultivate emotional safety, you can say things like, I know in the past I didn’t want to hear what was happening on the job because you weren’t listening to what was going on in my life. But since we are working on this relationship, I want you to know I actually do care. So what happened with that project that you were working on?

Loving, calm communication and emotional safety will be the foundation for rebuilding your relationship after relationship resentment.

Seek guidance.

You should consider therapy, and I mean individual therapy as well as couples therapy.

And I made a note to pause here because sometimes we experience resentment and relationships where there was abuse, or there is active abuse. And I want you to understand that there is no therapy that you as a couple, can go through that will heal that. If someone is abusive, that is their stuff, their issue—and they have an obligation to seek help on their own. Unless and until they do that, you can’t rebuild safely.

Hear me when I say this, couples therapy will not heal someone who is abusive. It’s not the relationship that is the issue—it is them. You are not the issue. How you cook the food was not the issue. How you dress is not the issue. What you said is not the issue. How long it took you at the grocery store is not the issue. It is on them. Give them the freedom to work out their own souls’ salvation. They need to save themselves, prove they have saved themselves, prove that they are different, prove that they have worked on themselves, and then consider working on a relationship.

Another way that you can seek guidance is through couples dating. This can be fun as well.

Let’s say you are partnered, your sister’s partnered, your friend is partnered, and y’all have game night or dinner or double dates or triple dates or quadruple dates… Just hanging out laughing, talking, trading stories. That is a very healing environment for a couple looking to rebuild. You may find that you are not the only one struggling with communication. You are not the only one struggling in your sex life. You are not the only one struggling with in-laws who don’t show the relationship respect. So getting around other loving couples is a good thing.

The last way to get guidance is through books. Choose a book that you can read together, and maybe on a Friday evening, you can discuss it over dinner. You could do this in your bedroom, you could do this wherever, just talk about what you’re reading. That is another form of guidance.

So individual therapy, couples therapy, couples dating, and books.

Additionally, if you have a trusted religious leader who is also licensed or certified, you may want to consider that as well.

Just keep in mind: You don’t want to take advice from anyone whose life you don’t want.

Moment Of Reflection

If you ignore resentment and don’t address it, it will grow deeper, bigger, and more expansive. There is no room for anything else when resentment is present. Love can’t be there. Affection, intimacy, empathy… All of those things leave the room because resentment takes up too much space. This isn’t something you can outlast. You have to heal it.

Press the restart button on your relationship. Go back to learning each other, dating each other, being friends with each other, and prioritizing things like communication, contribution, intimacy, and care. And don’t just care for each other. Care for the relationship, partnership, and the connection.

Until next time, beloved, I hope this helps.